OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/24434/PCLinuxOS_2011_KDE_A_Review_and_Retrospective
Exploring the Future of Computingen-usCopyright 2001-2015, David Adamsadam+nospam@osnews.comTue, 31 Mar 2015 18:58:37 GMThttp://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gifOSNews.comhttp://www.osnews.com
Aesthetics...http://www.osnews.com/thread?463084
http://www.osnews.com/thread?463084I agree with the reviewer on the lack of unified apps and aesthetics across PClinuxOs but the distro makes up for that in other ways (Best Kde distro :-), out of box support for variety of media codecs, Proprietary drivers for my ATI video card ,quick updates for my fav apps and a superb remastering tool)Edited 2011-02-18 07:04 UTCFri, 18 Feb 2011 06:57:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Vijayanandham)CommentsRE: Aesthetics...http://www.osnews.com/thread?463108
http://www.osnews.com/thread?463108

I agree with the reviewer on the lack of unified apps and aesthetics across PClinuxOs but the distro makes up for that in other ways (Best Kde distro :-), out of box support for variety of media codecs, Proprietary drivers for my ATI video card ,quick updates for my fav apps and a superb remastering tool)

The only thing I can really argue is "best KDE Distro," but that's purely subjective. And it's not something I could have argued several months back... many of the KDE-supporting distros have really improved their KDE4 integration, and while PCLOS wasn't the first to upgrade, they were the first to get a lot of things right. They purposely held onto KDE3 until they felt that KDE4 was damn well ready, and it paid off.

What I will say about PCLOS' own specific implementation of KDE is that it is easily the most unique, full of tweaks to make you forget you're using KDE4, and think you're actually using KDE3. That's not a bad thing, either: KDE3 was very nice, and PCLOS' tweaks seem to keep what made it so great while adding new KDE4 features and improvements (ie. the KDE settings menus, new window management features inspired by Windows 7, etc.).

I have a 64-bit machine though, and unfortunately there is no native 64-bit version of this distro, so it was not an option for the system I'm on. I'm almost tempted to install it temporarily anyway to play around with it for a little while; I'll be distro hopping soon anyway, since Debian Squeeze makes it such a pain in the ass to install nVidia drivers (following the instructions on their site, I always end up with a totally f***ed and unusable system with a flashing cursor/display, no usable command prompt).Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:32:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (UltraZelda64)CommentsRE[2]: Aesthetics...http://www.osnews.com/thread?463131
http://www.osnews.com/thread?463131ArchLinux has 64bit binaries and is my personal favourite KDE4-compatible distro.

I say "compatible" because it doesn't ship with a KDE desktop from ISO - you install it from the repositories. However if you've had any exposure to Arch this should all be fairly obvious to you.

If you want a KDE4-out-of-the-box distro, then Chakra is based upon Arch: http://chakra-project.org/Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:52:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Laurence)CommentsRE[3]: Aesthetics...http://www.osnews.com/thread?463210
http://www.osnews.com/thread?463210

I've tried to like Arch, and I do, but I always run into problems when actually trying to use it. The single system configuration file is great, and pacman in theory is excellent (dependency checking, etc.), it's rolling-release, and it gives you a minimum, blazing-fast base to build off of... it's got so many positive points, but what usually snags me is its packaging system... I just can't get used to it.

I've looked into Chakra, but it was a while back... I might consider it again since it's probably more mature by now. I admit though, the early testing releases I tried a while back were quite impressive for their stage of development. I can't even remember what my problems were with it, *if* I even had any (I didn't actually install it, ran it as a live distro, so my experience with it is relatively limited). Thanks for the suggestion.Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:52:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (UltraZelda64)CommentsRE[2]: Aesthetics...http://www.osnews.com/thread?463214
http://www.osnews.com/thread?463214I still remember how i held on to my KDE3 installation of PCLOS.It was so good.I believe PCLOS switched to KDE4 when KDE 4.3 came out and i started using KDE from 4.4.I used Arch long back and it needs too much tinkering.Edited 2011-02-19 00:42 UTCSat, 19 Feb 2011 00:36:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (Vijayanandham)CommentsRE[3]: Aesthetics...http://www.osnews.com/thread?463217
http://www.osnews.com/thread?463217

I still remember how i held on to my KDE3 installation of PCLOS.It was so good.I believe PCLOS switched to KDE4 when KDE 4.3 came out and i started using KDE from 4.4.

That sounds about right to me because IMO, it wasn't until 4.3 when KDE4 really started getting usable. And boom, all of a sudden, PCLOS had it and it was a great implementation compared to many other distros of the time. I wasn't quite as happy with some other major distros' implementations until 4.4 or 4.5.Sat, 19 Feb 2011 00:51:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (UltraZelda64)CommentsSay what??http://www.osnews.com/thread?463264
http://www.osnews.com/thread?463264"If you're a first-time Linux user [..] better choices are available."

What are you talking about? PCLOS has a few drawbacks, alright, but it's one of the most beginner-friendly distros out there, and if there's anything they get right, it is catering to first-time Linux users. It's not so long ago that Ubuntu really started to catch up on that front.Sat, 19 Feb 2011 17:02:00 GMTdonotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek)Comments